


A Decade

by inbox



Series: In The End [2]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Character Death, Depression, Fallout Kink Meme, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Male-Female Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-15
Updated: 2014-01-15
Packaged: 2018-01-08 19:58:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1136750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inbox/pseuds/inbox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arcade and Cass say goodbye to a friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Decade

"I don't know if I'm a bad friend for saying that I'm not surprised that he finally did it," said Arcade, glancing over at the woman walking at his side. Cass looked unperturbed, only meeting his admission with a shrug as she wrinkled her nose to push her sunglasses into a more comfortable spot. "Or that he had the balls to put me down as his next of kin."

"Why would you be? Surprised that he finally made his grand exit, that is. Not the balls bit. No surprise there." She shifted the metal canister in her hands, rolling it over and over until Arcade said _stop it, that's disrespectful_ in a prim tone. "It wasn't a matter if if he'd blow his brains out, it was a matter of when." She shrugged again. "I did my mourning a long time ago. Now I just feel sorry for the dumb fucker." 

"I hope you're this kind when I finally shuffle off this mortal coil, Cass." There wasn't much bite to his tone. She was right, as usual. Craig Boone had died a long time ago. It just took his body a while to catch up and check out with a handgun in his mouth and a dead NCR officer at his feet.

"I'll get drunk on your grave, Gannon. Just like you always wanted."

Arcade laughed and slung an arm over her shoulders, holding her close for a brief moment. It was a fine day in the Boneyard, the watery Spring sunshine enough to warm his back as they walked along the beach, looking for somewhere suitable to say goodbye to a dead man.

He was surprised that Boone made it a full ten years before he gave up on himself. The whirlwind events of '81 had lit a fire in the man's belly, burning bright enough to banish the shadows in his head and give him a new lease on life. He'd re-enlisted, even made it back into First Recon for a while before his night blindness got too bad. After that Boone drifted from unit to unit, earning a jacket full of reports that all had variants of _good but not exceptional_ , and finally wound up behind a desk on the outskirts of the Boneyard, weeding through young recruits barely old enough to shave. 

Cass found him first. She had a habit of poaching anyone dismissed from the NCR for being too headstrong and individual minded, figuring that those kinds of folk made for excellent swift runners to move sensitive goods quickly. Maybe she'd been a bit too close to the recruiting station, maybe someone had tattled, but Boone had set upon her in full rig and it took for the first _motherfucker I'll clean your clock_ to drop from Cass' lips before they recognised each other.

That'd been six long years ago, almost a decade to the day since Arcade had packed his bags and said goodbye to the Mojave, keen to leave the frontier and settle down into a teaching job where getting shot at was a relatively rare occurrence. Since then there'd been a lot of nights sitting around Arcade's apartment in the Followers compound by the beach, he and Cass and Boone getting older and greyer every time the sun set over the water. Arcade counted his blessings that Cass was inclined to hang around after all these years and treat him with a warm sisterly lack of deference. Some people have a family thrust upon them, but some people find their own family. A raucous redhead who blew into town every few months to drink all his booze and pass out on his sofa seemed right about his speed.

Boone, on the other hand... he had his moments when he managed to shake the black dog that was always biting at his heels, and in those rare moments he was much more agreeable to be around than experience would lead Arcade to believe, patient and kind with a sense of humour as dry as the desert floor. Those warm moments happened less and less as the years passed, and although he still regularly found an excuse to stand barefoot in Arcade's kitchen and pour them both a drink to celebrate something minor, it wasn't hard to tell that he was barely going through the motions.

Arcade sighed.

"Don't get lost in your head," said Cass, and nudged him with a sharp elbow. "You're no fun when you're not talking."

"I'm just thinking," said Arcade, stooping enough to scoop up a worn seashell. "You know me, always thinking."

Cass scoffed.

"Thank you," he said dryly. "I'm just... I should've said something. I could hear it in his voice."

"I've been hearing it in his voice for the past two years," pointed out Cass. She held up the makeshift urn holding all that was left of Boone and shook it for emphasis. "You knew this was coming, so did I. Like you said, hell if you'd be surprised about it." 

"That doesn't mean I can't make it all about me for a few minutes." Arcade threw the seashell as hard as he could into the air, watching it catch in the breeze before tumbling back to the sand. "I don't know, Cass. I don't have any family except you, and I guess by extension Craig. I'm not surprised that he finally snapped, but--"

"—but you know he didn't want help, but that's not going to stop you from cutting a switch and whipping yourself over it." Cass stopped in her tracks and thrust the urn at him, leaving him to grasp at it before it hit the sand. "There you go, you ol' sentimental fool. You can make amends by being the one to tip his dumb ass out."

They walked together in silence until they stopped in the shadow of a rotting pier, the damp sand cool beneath their feet.

"Well," said Arcade, a touch unnecessarily, "This seems suitably gothic enough."

He unscrewed the lid of the urn and peered inside before looking over at Cass. She spread her hands wide and shrugged.

"Don't look at me, pal. Eulogies ain't exactly my thing." 

"You're a real help, Cass, you know that?" He toed off his shoes and waded into the water. For a moment he stood there, looking at the urn in his hands and waiting for the crisp ocean breeze to swing away from the beach. When the air whistling under the pier turned straight out to sea, Arcade took one last look and, without ado, upturned the urn and let the ashes fall. Boone caught the wind and swirled amongst the rotting wooden pylons for a few moments and then he, too, was finally gone.

"Craig Boone," he said to the frothing eddies of water under the pier. "I'm genuinely surprised you lived as long as you did. Whatever you were looking for, I hope you found it. _Requiescat in pace_ , I guess."

"Rest in peace, you dumb shitbird." Cass pushed her sunglasses up and waited for Arcade to make it back to dry sand, shaking out the last heavy cremains into the shallow waves and screwing the lid on tight as he walked. "You want a drink?"

"Now more than ever." 

They walked to the high tide line and sat on the sand, passing a hip flask of whiskey between them and letting the sun warm the back of their necks. Cass was right. The man had died long ago, and it felt easy to say goodbye when you realised that you somehow did all your mourning long before the corpse was cold.

"To Boone," said Cass, and took a swig from the flask.

"To us," added Arcade, and drained the flask dry. "To another ten years."


End file.
